Maven and YFM lead £6.5M investment in biomed innovator, Biorelate

Maven and YFM Equity Partners, have announced the completion of a £6.5m investment into Biorelate.

Founded in 2014, Biorelate curates biomedical knowledge to empower drug discovery through a proprietary AI platform. Galactic AI™ uses innovative technology to uniquely combine natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) to capture highly valuable biomedical data and insights, which pharmaceutical and life sciences organisations can utilise to improve decision making in their drug discovery programs.

Biopharmaceutical companies are investing more into AI and data-driven solutions that are more cost-effective and can also be instrumental in finding entirely new hypotheses unforeseen by human experts. Biorelate is helping on both fronts by capturing billions of biomedical datapoints not found in existing databases, which are then used to form a more complete map of available scientific research and support biopharma companies in making drug discovery breakthroughs. Since launching Galactic AI™ in 2020, Biorelate has experienced significant growth and has brought on board leading global companies including AstraZeneca and Idorsia.

The funding was raised through YFM’s British Smaller Companies VCTs, the Maven VCTs and TriplePoint VCT, with further investment from NPIF Maven Equity Finance, which is managed by Maven and part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund, as well as a group of angel investors from the Manchester Tech Trust. Biorelate will use the investment to increase its commercial and technical capacity, as well as support wider expansion into the US which is the biomedical industry’s largest market.

Gavin Bell, Investment Director led the deal for Maven. The YFM team included Andy Thomas, Aaron Lowery and Ian Waterfield.

”Drug discovery is an exciting area with many companies working on new therapeutics. Equally, there is a vast amount of invaluable evidence, which is hard to access and is subsequently unused by these same companies. Our mission at Biorelate is to capture this untapped data and help them make sense of it. With this improved understanding we are empowering these companies to make better decisions and speed up the drug discovery process.”

Dan Jamieson, founder and CEO of Biorelate

“Biorelate has grown significantly since we first backed the business at an early stage through NPIF Maven Equity Finance. It’s exciting to see an innovative deep tech business born in Manchester now develop globally. We’re absolutely delighted to continue to support the vision and ambition of Dan and the Biorelate team, to scale and capitalise on the attractive global growth opportunities.”

Gavin Bell, Investment Director at Maven

“By quickly and effectively processing the growing and evolving swathe of publicly available biomedical data, Biorelate has the ability to be at the forefront of innovation in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry. We are excited to be part of the next step in the business’ journey, and see huge potential for continued growth and expansion.”

Andy Thomas, Partner at YFM Equity Partners

“We are pleased that the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund is continuing to unlock the North’s growth potential through ambitious businesses like Biorelate, that make profound differences in their industries. Biorelate’s growth is a step forward for the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry, and NPIF is proud to have facilitated its development.”

Sean Hutchinson at the British Business Bank

Other advisers on the deal included: Craig Corporate, Sales Blueprint, Pannone Corporate, The Startup Factory, Catalysis, Lockton, Shoosmiths, Philip Hare & Associates, CMS and Hadley Appenine.